Drawing wood

A couple of photos of the spanking new recycled wooden floor that we recently got put in the living and dining rooms...

The floorboards are recycled West Australian Karri (sourced and shipped over by the Gekkos-in-law). The installation was carried out by a taciturn, but highly skilled, team of Japanese tradies, and took about 4 days.

The fun part was getting up- and downstairs on an extension ladder through a bedroom window during the 24 hour period while the gloss finish dried. The final result is worth the torn flyscreen...

Also notice Gekko's paintwork: the walls are "whisper white" and the skirting boards are "stowe white" (my business card is "bone" and even has a watermark. But that's another story --- one that I'll be happy to recount just as soon as I've returned some videotapes...).

It's a cliché, but I feel compelled to remark on how amazing is the transformation that can be effected by a simple lick o' paint and change of floor covering.

Meanwhile, outside...

1. All little bit of paving (mine is the cement-strewn bit at the end):

2. Vegetables growing rampant -- the Day of the Triffids is coming soon...

3. Some shelves I put up a while back to capture the sunlight. We're growing strawberries there for now...

"The Fall of Hyperion", by Dan Simmons

The Fall of Hyperion by Dan Simmons

My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Abandoned at around the halfway mark...

I'm sorry, but i'm afraid it's just too darn long! 90% of the prose seems to trundle along wasting time on irrelevant, inane detail -- dispensing the interesting stuff in agonizingly sparse doses. I gave up when I realized I didn't care enough about the resolution of the increasingly convoluted plot to turn another page.

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Screen Dumps: a brace of steaming torrent turds

Date Night (2010)

Tina Fey and Steve Carell ham it up in this rom com / blundering action flick which features a few easy laughs and an amusing cameo from a topless Mark Wahlberg. I liked Ray Liotta's turn as a mob boss (he seems to be maturing nicely into this role) and William Fichtner (the weaselly van Santz from "Heat" who was despatched so satisfyingly by Bobby De Niro) is always good for a laugh (although the pole-dancing scene near the end was way overdone and one of the films most cringeworthy moments). Both Fey and Carell are deservedly successful on the small screen (I'm a big fan of Fey's "30 Rock"); this effort demonstrates that this is no guarantee of success on the big screen.


Hot Tub Time Machine (2010)

It looks like the runaway sucess of last year's "The Hangover" has got the Hollywood clone factory running in overdrive as a series of decreasingly funny "buddy flicks" roll off the conveyor belt. With this one, you can just imagine the cretinous Hollywood agents pitching it to their studio bosses: "it's like Hangover but with sort of a Back To The Future twist.. but, get this, instead of a Delorean, the time machine is a hot tub! And instead of starting in the eighties they're going TO the eighties!"

It's not a terrible film but the returns in this genre are diminishing rather rapidly and I hope the studios take the hint. One thing I did enjoy was Crispin Glover (George "I'm your density" McFly from the original Back To The Future) as the hapless bellhop destined to have his arm severed.

Can I join you Jerry B...?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yxTNIi2g14&feature=related

Awesome funk bass/guitar jam featuring guitarist and producer Nile Rodgers. LOVE that Strat!

"But Beautiful", by Geoff Dyer

But Beautiful: A Book about Jazz by Geoff Dyer

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As the title suggests, this is a beautiful, unique little book. It's a great tribute to jazz in both content and form. In content, as it is a series of semi-fictional vignettes taken from the lives of some of the great jazz musicians; and in form, as Dyer takes some (often skeletal) facts and improvises around them, filling in the gaps to craft stories with details as they could have been. The writing style is gritty but tender and has a very authentic feel. I'd highly recommend this to any fan of good music and good writing.

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George Benson @ Sydney Opera House

On Saturday we saw George Benson perform his "Unforgettable Tribute To Nat King Cole" show at the Opera House. It was a masterful performance and a very enjoyable show. It comprised two quite distinct parts: the first two-thirds was Benson singing Nat King Cole classics with a large Count Basie-style jazz orchestra, while the last third (what he called the "Benson Party") saw him break out the guitar and play a selection of his own songs.

The Diamond Age, By Neal Stephenson

The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer by Neal Stephenson

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Brimming with edgy, interesting futurologisms (the nanotechnology ideas are impressive given the book was written in the mid nineties), but as a story it doesn't work very well. Stephenson gets bogged down in fanciful, pointless detail which, combined with the disjointed, perspective-jumping narrative makes it really tough going (I laboured through on this, my third attempt at the book). To be honest, it's been a while since I've struggled as much to keep focused on a book all the way through. The ending seems rushed, leaving many of his (very good) ideas under-explored.

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